Sourcing Candidates from Social Media- What's Missing?

So you’ve got the attention of top quality talent, but they’re not ready to apply to your current openings… now what?

Originally published on My Blog on March 26, 2010.

Since the value of employment branding grows over time, it’s critical that your efforts include some type of strategy for long term relationship management with passive candidates. A great brand will attract both active and passive seekers. Active seekers will apply to your job postings, and enter your hiring process. But what are you doing for the passive candidates. Whether they are unwilling to apply because they haven’t decided to move on from their current position, or because you don’t have any current openings that match their skills, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth your time to engage.

Ideally, a well developed employment brand strategy will include activities geared toward attracting both the active and passive candidates. Active seekers can be attracted with traditional job posting advertisements and by posting jobs on your own website, and making them search engine optimized (you’d be shocked by how many job searches start in a Google search field). To catch the eye of passive seekers, it’s a good idea to be leveraging social media, developing advertising programs outside of the job board arena, and creating recruitment campaigns to targeted groups.

Drawing the seekers into a strong landing page that highlights the culture, benefits, and values of your organization is foundational to this process. What many companies tend to miss, however, is giving the visitors of that site multiple options for how to engage with you. At the very least, a landing page should include a simple and easy process for the visitor to apply to open jobs and a second process for those who wish to stay in touch or receive updates from you.

How do you manage this process? Any thoughts or ideas on best practices? Any lessons learned that you’re willing to share?

Comment by Chris Wessell on March 31, 2010 at 2:48pm: Off the top of my head, your landing page should definitely have links to follow your Twitter Feed, Fan page on Facebook, etc... of course you have to keep those flowing with info, whether it be job postings, press releases, industry articles, etc... I learned firsthand how tough it is to keep that info flowing and keep your company relevant and top of mind so I have an intern who's only job is managing those two feeds...!

That's one example, I feel, of how you can keep them interested. Maybe even throw out some interactive content on FB, like posts that ask questions of your fans and encourage them to comment...

Comment by Robin Eads on March 31, 2010 at 3:33pm: Recognizing that not all workers want to be "job seekers" but are open to potential opportunities is key. Find a way to engage your audience at all stages of the process. In my career I have often reached out to candidates that were not interested; but with the right approach and an interest in providing them with value so they will ultimately provide a good lead, you keep them engaged. Find out what their hot buttons are - their areas of interest. Make sure you know what those areas of interest are and you could keep a contact for life!

Comment by Jason C. Blais on March 31, 2010 at 4:08pm: Chris, thanks for the input. Do you think too many options, or to many roads to travel down dilutes the experience or makes the process confusing for visitors to the site? Or, does it offer the converse effect, where the more options you provide, the more likely the company is to get some type of response from a larger number of visitors? I can see how it could go either way... by the way, I love the idea of pushing a passive visitor to comment on SOMETHING on the site or your network. Could be anything, but it at least gives the visitor an opportunity to engage.

Comment by Jason C. Blais on March 31, 2010 at 4:11pm: Thanks Robin! How are things? JobShouts still taking off? It sounds from your comments like you support the philosophy of providing multiple roads for the seeker to travel down, essentially having them self select their path based on their interests. I like it. To your point, even if they aren't qualified, if you've given them a good experience and piqued their interest, they may very well provide a reference to your organization. Thanks for commenting!

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